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>>Presenter: Hello everybody. I'm Julie Wiskirchen from the Authors at Google team here in Google,
Los Angeles. Today, I'm excited to be welcoming Lisa Brackmann. Lisa has worked as an executive
at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and
a singer/songwriter bassist in an LA rock band. And she lives right here in Venice.
Her debut novel, Rock Paper Tiger, made several Best of 2010 lists, including Amazon's Top
100 Novels and Top 10 Mysteries and Thrillers. She's here today to talk about her second
novel, a thriller called Getaway. Please join me in welcoming Lisa Brackmann.
[applause]
>>Lisa Brackmann: Hi. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for having me. I have lived
in Venice for over 25 years. This is actually the first time I have been in the giant binocular
building, so this is a thrill for me. As Julie mentioned, I write fiction, thrillers. I like
to think they have a somewhat literary quality. I'm also very interested in using the suspense
genre to talk about larger issues, because it's one that lends itself to that. It's one
of the few kinds of genre fictions where you can talk about big things that are happening
in the world. I think that it can work really well if you're careful about how you handle
it. This particular book, the main character is
a woman from Los Angeles. Her name is Michelle. She used to live in Brentwood. She's a recent
widow. After her husband died, she had a nasty shock. I'll just say that her husband was
involved in real estate finance. I was writing this book in 2008. It's where it's set in
my head. You might be able to guess where I'm going with this. But her husband basically
was engaged in a Ponzi scheme, lost all of their money, lost their house, lawsuits and
debt. Michelle is someone who really is at loose ends with her life, doesn't know what
she's going to do, doesn't know how she's going to cope with the betrayal and the fact
that she suddenly has nothing. What she does is she takes a prepaid vacation
to Puerto Vallarta that her husband had arranged before he died. She decides she's going to
spend a couple of days on the beach, have some margaritas, try to figure out what her
next step is going to be. She's sitting on that beach and she's reading what we like
to call a "beach book." In Michelle's case, we would call it upmarket women's fiction.
She's reading this book. The female character meets an options trader and a cultured woodworker.
Michelle is reading this and going like, "She's so going to end up with the cultured woodworker,
because that's how these books work. You always know how they end about 30 pages in." As she's
sitting there and she's having some margaritas, she meets a very good looking guy on the beach.
She's maybe under the illusion that this is going to be that kind of a beach book. They
have a few drinks, she takes him back to her hotel room, and then things go very, very
wrong, because Michelle doesn't realize that she's in a thriller and not in upmarket women's
fiction. [laughter] What I wanted to do was write a noir thriller.
I'm going to do a little reading from the book. This is after Michelle has had some
misadventures. Some scary things have happened. But she's in a taxi going to the airport,
going home to Los Angeles. As difficult as that is, at this point, she's just really
glad to get away from this, because it's been an upsetting experience. She's sure everything's
going to be fine. But she's only on page 41. [laughter] So the odds are not good. [pause]
[begins reading] "The taxi chugged up the hill, heading in
the opposite direction of the airport at first, then around a tight curve that straightened
into a road heading north. Condos at the crest of the hill morphing into colonias as they
descended. The road widened, dirt shoulders on either side, concrete shoring up the hillsides
covered with graffiti and political posters, mostly for PRI and PAN.
Michelle couldn't remember what the party stood for here, though she thought that "pan"
might be Spanish for bread. She leaned against the back seat, eyes half closed. She had the
beginnings of a headache. 'I shouldn't have had those drinks,' she thought. 'As soon as
I get home, it's back to the regiment, the workout routine, the yoga, the raw food and
greens. Definitely no margaritas.' The calories in one were staggering.
The taxi driver muttered something under his breath that sounded like a curse, put his
foot on the brake, and pulled over onto the dirt shoulder. 'What's wrong?' The driver
*** his thumb behind them. 'Polícia.' She turned and looked out the rear window.
A squad car, black and white, compact, a little battered, light bar flashing blue and red.
'Great,' Michelle thought. Had the driver been speeding? Was a tail light out? She tried
to leave plenty of time to get to the airport, but she'd heard that things with the police
could turn complicated here. Well, there was no point in panicking.
The policeman approached the driver's side door. Best not to get involved, Michelle decided.
She stared out the passenger window. They'd parked at the edge of a lot that locked like
an ad hoc body shop, with cars in various states of assembly: stacked side panels, bumpers,
and doors. A tin roof propped up on poles was the only indication of any permanency.
'Odd,' she thought. 'What would stop someone from coming in at night and stealing parts?
Maybe the workers slept here. Maybe the whole operation was somehow magically picked up
at dusk and reassembled the next day.' She could hear the policeman and the driver
exchange a few low words. 'Ahora al puerto' was one she caught. The policeman rapped his
knuckles on the back seat window. 'Señora.' 'What? Excuse me?' The policeman gestured
for her to open the door. She did. 'Su bolsa.' My, purse. She could feel her heart pound
in her throat. Was this some kind of shake down? A robbery in the guise of a traffic
stop? What was she supposed to do? She handed him her purse. The policeman opened
it, riffling through the main compartment, opening the interior zip, then moving to the
exterior pockets. It was a Marc Jacobs Hobo, and there were a lot of them. The policeman
extracted a brown paper packet, folded, a square the size of a lopped off business card.
He opened it. 'Come out of the car.' 'What?' 'Out of the car.' 'What is that?' Michelle
asked. 'I-- I don't know what that is!' 'Now!' 'That's not mine.'
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him. Lawyer. How did you say 'lawyer'? The
only word Michelle could come up with was 'albóndigas,' and that, she was fairly sure,
meant 'meatballs.' Sitting in the back of the squad car seemed
so unreal, she couldn't process it. The seat smelled like beer-scented puke. The policeman
had cuffed her, hands behind her back, and tight enough to hurt, taken her luggage out
of the taxi and thrown it next to her. Was he even a real policeman? He looked like one,
she thought. A big man with a big belly and a mustache and aviator sunglasses. His uniform
looked real. The squad car looked credible, too. Now and again, the radio squawked and
broadcast chatter. 'Dónde vamos?' she managed. 'A la cárcel.'
'What?' 'Jail.' The policeman barked out a laugh. 'Tienes drogas, go to jail!' 'Drugs?
I don't have any drugs!' He shrugged fractionally, shoulders tense, hands gripping the wheel.
A setup, she thought. It was some kind of setup, a con, a way to extort money.
'Look,' she said. 'This is a misunderstanding. Can't we work this out?' As soon as she said
it, she knew she'd made a mistake. 'What do you think, lady? You want to give me something?'
'No, I-- I just--' 'Money, maybe? Something else?' He laughed again, all the while staring
straight ahead. 'It's a misunderstanding,' she repeated. 'I'm not trying to insult you.'
'You want to give me something? You want to stop right here?'
The squad car slowed. On one side of the road, there were cinder block buildings, apartments,
mostly, a few downtrodden businesses, peeling hand-painted signs, rusting cars, broken down
fences. On the other, a steep hill, dirt roads, shacks interspersed among browning vines and
palms. 'No,' she said. 'No.' The car sped up again."
[stops reading] So yes. We leave her in a rather difficult
place. I'm going to talk a little bit more about the book. I'd like to encourage you
to ask questions, because I'm really more comfortable asking questions than I am just
standing up here and talking. But a little more background about it. After
my first book, which was set in China, I didn't want to do another book that was set in China.
I wanted to try something different. I picked Puerto Vallarta because it's an environment
that I know pretty well. I've been there about a dozen times and felt that I could treat
it credibly. Given that, it then became, "Well, what kind of a story could I set here?" I
wanted to do a noir thriller, which, in my definition, is, basically, you have a woman
or a man with some troubles, and she meets a woman or a man who is trouble. Then things
go very, very wrong. Puerto Vallarta has a very large ex-pat community. A lot of North
Americans who go there for the cheaper cost of living. I wanted to set it primarily among
the ex-pat community because it was very important for me not to do, "Ooh, scary Mexico book"
although I think this passage, it does come across like that.
The heroes and the villains, if there are any heroes, are mostly Americans who live
in Puerto Vallarta. Then you look at what kinds of issues can you base a thriller around.
Drug cartels were a pretty obvious choice. But the book, to me, is not primarily about
drug cartels. I wasn't trying to do a journalistic exposé of that. I was really more interested
in dealing with the larger issue of corruption. Michelle's husband was involved in corruption
in the banking crisis. Though these forms of corruption don't generally result in headless
bodies on street corners, they still devastated hundreds of thousands of people's lives. I
don't even think we can count up the damage that the banking crisis has caused. If it's
a drug cartel or a banking cartel, whatever it is, to me, they're different forms of the
same kind of problem, which is greed that's unrestrained by morality or legality.
Michelle, although she--. The main plot point in the book is she has to survive this situation
that she's gotten herself into. To a large extent, for me, the book was about Michelle
coming to grips with the corruption in her own life, how she picked a comfortable lifestyle
where she wasn't asking questions, even though she knew something was wrong, because she
didn't really want to know. She had her life where everything was easy and pleasant. Even
though she knew she needed to make some changes, she kept putting them off, because it's just
easier to stay in the same place when it's a comfortable place. She has to come to grips
with how she enabled corruption in her own life.
Then, what happens when you go from being in a position of privilege, which she was,
to suddenly having all of that ripped away and not having the resources or the wealth,
and realizing that in the kinds of systems in which we live, that can very easily make
you a disposable person. One of the things that you see in Puerto Vallarta, which is
a beautiful place--. I had to say in the acknowledgments in this book, "Don't let this book scare you
away from going. I go there all the time. I really like it."
But you really do see very concrete evidence of the disparity in wealth. You have rather
wealthy tourists enjoying these beautiful beaches and resorts. You have ex-pats who
come here because the price of living is lower and they can live comfortable lives that they
wouldn't be able to live in the United States or Canada. You have some very wealthy people
who live in the community, who are involved with the real estate.
And then you have a lot of very poor people. If you sit on a beach and have a margarita,
your waiter is making not very much money. It's hard to survive. During the summer slowdown,
it's very difficult for most of the local people to make a living, because so much of
the economy is based on tourism. You have this constant stream of beach vendors who
try to sell you things. You sit there and it's like, "Braids, scarves, jewelry, serapes?"
They are making a marginal living at best doing this.
There are a couple of scenes in this book that take place in the old municipal dump,
which I visited. I had the opportunity to go, and I was like, "You know, this has got
to be noir. I've got to go see this." It is what you imagine it to be, except a lot more.
It's a lot more intense. There's a whole group of people who make their living scavenging
things at the dump, because nothing is-- things aren't recycled separately. They're up there
in this intense heat on this literal mountain of trash. The city has now grown around. It
used to be out in the countryside, and now you stand up there and it's like resorts,
New Vallarta, the university, and the giant mountain of garbage. They're ripping open
these bags and sorting all of this stuff by hand. There's stuff up there like when you
butcher a cow, all the extra parts end up somewhere: there. It was pretty intense. I'm
going like, "Well, this is a little on the nose, but what can you say about the way things
are set up, where people are making their living gleaning what might be valuable from
other people's trash?" Those are the kinds of things that I was thinking
about when I was writing the book. I tried very hard not to be didactic about them, because
nobody wants to read somebody standing up here, talking like me, about stuff like that.
But it was very important for me to talk about it, because that, to me, is what the book
is really about. And, will she get away with her life? You know. [pause]
If any of you'd like to ask any questions about the book, about writing, about publishing,
I would really be happy to take questions.
>>Male #1: Hi there. This will be my introduction to your work. I'm not familiar with your previous
book. I'm looking forward to it. I'm just curious what got you started into writing
fiction?
>>Brackmann: I think it was one of those things I was born with. I remember when I was about
five years old that I was going to write my epic of the cats who went camping. This was
going to be my first big novel. It got stalled because I didn't know how to spell "tent."
I sadly had to abandon that project. But it's something that I always wanted to do. I think
most people that are writers come to it. I just remember the first time that I opened
a book. I opened a book, and for whatever reason, I could read pretty much immediately.
It wasn't a big learning curve, it was just, "Wow! Words on a page that tell us a story."
I thought this was the most miraculous thing ever.
Then, I think, as I got older, – so I've written most of my life, on and off. I've
gone through periods where I wasn't doing it as actively, where I tried to do other
things. But I'm someone, I like to travel. I like to observe. I like to try to figure
out how I think the world works. What's going on here? How are these things put together?
What is it we're all doing? I don't--. Writing non fiction doesn't have the same appeal to
me as trying to take these sorts of issues and questions and cast them in a fictional
form. I think it's as much about making sense of the world as I observe it, as anything
else. That's my motivation. And having fun. Writing books like this is fun. You know?
It's like, "Oh, what horrible thing can I make happen now?" [laughs] I don't know, maybe
there's an element of masochism. I'm not sure.
>>Presenter: I'm just curious about how you got your first book published, and the process,
and how long it took you to work on it, and so forth? And editing, and all of that?
>>Brackmann: Anybody that is involved with the publishing industry these days, will tell
you that it's an industry that's--. There's a lot of changes that are taking place. There's
a lot of uncertainties. My other author friends, I think that the line we always fall back
on is "It's a brutal business" because there's an element of luck involved as well, and timing.
It's kind of like you find the right project, the right person, at the right time, and all
those windows have to line up. There are certain things you can do to improve your chances,
but you're always going to be dealing with that.
In my case, I decided that I wanted to write something that I could sell, because I've
been writing most of my life, but not really with the intent of selling something. It was
just something that I did. I thought, "Well, what can I write about that is commercial,
that's going to have some appeal to people, that I know about?" And contemporary China
was my choice. I've been traveling there for about 30 years. Then it was just, "Well, let
me find something I'm really angry about" which would have been the Iraq war and the
war on terror. And then, "Let me figure out how I would talk about contemporary China
and the war on terror and put those things together" which was an awkward fit. I characterized
it like you're juggling a bowling ball, a flaming torch, and a chainsaw, and trying
to get these things to work and play well together.
I came up with what I came up with. I worked on the book. Then I just did that thing that
they tell you to do, which was I started querying agents. If you're familiar with the process,
you create a query letter, which is basically a pitch for your book. You make it sound like
[laughs] like the flap on the jacket. A little bit about yourself and why you're the person
who's writing this book. And you send it off. I did about six of these and didn't really
get anywhere. I discouraged very easily at the time. I was like, "Oh, I wrote another
really weird-*** book that no one's going to publish." Then a friend of mine says, "Why
don't you query this guy, Nathan Bransford?" who was a well known agent, if you're in the
blogging publishing world at all. I did, and he wrote me back right away and said, "Oh,
this is really interesting. Can you send me the partial?" I sent him the partial, which
is usually the first 50 pages. A couple of hours go by, and it's like, "Can you send
me the book?" And I did. And then, we worked together revising the
book, because it was pretty unwieldy. There were a lot of different things going on. One
of the things that you learn when you're doing this is your fiction has to fit somewhat into
a category, which can be very frustrating. But it's largely about--. Even with the reduced
role of bookstores, it still comes down to "Where does this book go on the shelf?" If
you can't answer that question, you're making your task of selling the book that much harder.
A lot of what I did was cutting away stuff that got in the way of the first book being
a suspense novel. Then, we went out, after six months or so
of that. I guess the book itself took me about, it was close to two years, I guess, the writing
process and the revising process. A year and a half, two years. Then we went out on submission.
Right when we went out on submission, it was middle of 2008, and the entire economy cratered.
It was like, "Oh, great. My timing is awesome." My agent, thankfully, he was a very good agent,
and very dedicated, and was going to do his best to sell this book. We sent it out in
little batches at a time. It took a year, and then SoHo published the book, which has
ended up being a really great fit. They are an actual independent publisher, but they're
distributed by Random House, so you get the best of both worlds.
So yeah, it was the traditional process. It's just the traditional process. There's a lot
of different ways to do it now that weren't available when I was doing it. The traditional
process can be a really long and hard road. You just have to be willing to do a lot of
pounding your head against the wall until either your head or the wall gives way. That's
generally what it takes.
>>Male #2: So you mentioned that you've traveled repeatedly to Puerto Vallarta and to China.
Where else do you go back to repeatedly, and what do those places have in common? What
might show up in future books?
>>Brackmann: [pause] Well, China. Have any of you traveled to China? Anyone? It's an
incredibly--. It's a big country, like the United States, and it's very diverse. There
are a lot of different parts to it. I was interested in dealing with contemporary China,
which is--. Most Western authors that have written about China tend to do stuff that's
set in a period. The reality of China today is very, very different. It changes very rapidly.
One of the challenges when I was writing Rock Paper Tiger was I had to keep updating it,
even as the book was in galleys. Like, "Oh, they don't use this kind of car for taxis
in Beijing anymore. Whoops. Let me fix that." I don't know that it really--. I guess what
the two books have in common, well, in the first book, the one set in China, the main
character has lived in China for a couple of years, in Beijing, so she has some basic
familiarity with her environment. She can speak the language decently. She can navigate,
up to a point. But she still is an outsider. In this book, this is a woman on vacation
who's just completely, you know, from Brentwood! [laughs] She's not prepared to deal with what
she runs into at all. It really takes her a while to--. I get a little frustrated by
thrillers where everybody understands they're supposed to act like they're in a thriller
right away, because that's just not very realistic. I'm more interested in what somebody, quote
"an ordinary person" would do who's in an unfamiliar environment and really doesn't
know what's going on or how to navigate or what a smart choice is, and doesn't have a
lot of resources to figure those things out. Both of the books have that element somewhat
in common, where an ordinary person without super martial arts powers or hacking skills
gets involved in an extraordinary situation that is way above their pay grade. That would
be the main element in common. I have a third book that I've sold that's
coming out May next year that is actually a sequel to the first book. It's going to
go to different places in China than the first book went to, because I like to give a little
bit of a travel log. We're going to some pretty places. I call it a "lighthearted romp through
an environmental apocalypse." [laughter] Although we do go to some pretty places in the book,
too. Yeah, I'm just going to call all my books lighthearted romps. This is a lighthearted
romp through the wonderful world of black ops and drug cartels. Lighthearted romp through
an environmental apocalypse. Like that. Because I think that the stuff I write has an element
of humor in it. I don't know whether that comes across as clearly as I think it does,
but I like a little bit of satire or humor in it, as well.
>>Male #3: It sounds like you've been writing Americans in international territory where
they're unfamiliar--
>>Brackmann: Mmhmm.
>>Male #3: --and have to respond and react. In the future, have you thought about maybe
doing foreigners in America, and what they have to go through?
>>Brackmann: I think I wouldn't be against that. I'm not one of these people that thinks
that somebody from one particular background can't write about somebody from a background
that's different. I do think if you're going to do that, you really, really, really have
to do your research, and you really have to be familiar with the person, with the culture,
with what it is that you're trying to portray. I would only approach that if I felt that
it was something I could do credibly. I had enough trouble in the first book because I
had, the main character was in the National Guard, and I have not been. That was something
that I really, really immersed myself in. I was really gratified when I got some feedback
from vets who asked me if I'd served and told me that I'd done a really good job with it.
That was very meaningful to me. But you really have to do your homework. And actually, I'm
not-- the fourth book is still a little bit up in the air, but it's going to be set primarily
in the United States. I'm hoping to have--. It's going to be serious subjects, some very
serious stuff, but I think the element of satire will be a little bit more apparent,
because I'm going to do a political campaign, among other things. I'm looking forward to
doing that. So the character, in this case, is going to be a little bit better at operating
in the environment.
>>Female #1: I've read both Rock Paper Tiger and Getaway. I think you do a fantastic job
of, as you said, layering-- that's my word, but-- layering the social issues that you
want to talk about in your books with actual plot. It makes me wonder how much you outline,
if at all. Maybe give us an idea of what your actual writing process is.
>>Brackmann: [chuckling] Outline? What is this outline? It really--. It's interesting,
because I just wrote a piece about how I plot, how I create story for a collection that's
going to be coming out in a couple of weeks. I really had to think about it. It wasn't
clear to me until I started thinking about the fourth book how I do it. The fourth book
is actually a little bit more organized already than I usually--. I've learned a little bit.
I don't like outlining because I feel like a lot of times, I get to know my characters
as I write them. It's almost like it's a process of observation, like I'm watching these people
and trying to, like, "What are they doing? How do they act? What's their thing?" I don't
like to do too much outlining. I do tend to take--. Location is important to me. Issues
are important to me. And characters. Then you go, "Okay, what's the driver?" If I've
got these elements, what's the thing that's going to drive the story? That's the tricky
part, because, especially when you're writing stuff-- hmm, excuse me-- that is suspense
fiction, it needs to be suspenseful. You have to have something that creates tension, and
you have to create tension all the way through the book. You don't want to be too loosey-goosey
about it. But I think pacing is something that I've learned over the course of writing
three and now starting on a fourth book. It gets to be a lot easier to go, cut, cut, moving
on, moving on, moving on. I have a short attention span, so that helps, too. But no, I don't
plot, I don't outline. I try to set up the situation so that the story can then unwind,
like, okay, if you know you have this character in this setting with these problems, and this
thing that has to-- that she's got to deal with and solve-- then what happens?
But I always tell people everybody's process is different. I'm a real believer in not instructing
people on their own process. It's something you need to discover through work. The only
thing that I say is that I really think it's a good idea to write every day, if you can,
especially when you're working on a project, because--. For me, if I take too much time
off, then there's this process of reacclimating myself and getting back into it. My productivity
just goes way down. Whereas if I work every day, I don't have to put in a lot of hours
trying to write, but I get a lot more done in the same amount of time. Setting a schedule
is helpful, which was one of those really hard things for somebody like me to admit.
I hate schedules. I hate them. You know what, really, it works better if you do that. Whatever
works for you. I used to write, when I had a full time job, I wrote from 10 to midnight
pretty much every night.
>>Male #1: I have another question, too. This is related to the character, your characters.
How much of yourself finds its way into your main characters? Do you explicitly try to
refrain from doing that?
>>Brackmann: I think that most people that are writing--. Well, not everybody, because
some fiction authors will talk very explicitly about how "This is kind of like me, but a
more idealized version of me." I'm the opposite. "Well, there's elements of this that are like
me, but a more screwed up version of me." I don't want to write about myself. I think
a lot of fiction is disguised biography, because obviously, everything is coming out of your
own head. But that's the heroes and the villains. It's the whole, everything you're writing.
You're taking little pieces of yourself. And empathy, which I think is the most important
thing, and trying to understand how this person would react, placed in these situations. Not
me, no. Mm-mm. [laughs] And especially, I really tried. The first book, the main character
is young, swears a lot, drinks a lot, does a lot of really questionable, because she's
really screwed up. When I wrote the second book, I wanted to prove I can actually write
an entire book where the f bomb doesn't get dropped every paragraph. I'm going to do it
right here. I think also, and again, depending on the
kind of writer you are. I don't want to do the same book every time. I'm not interested
in dealing with the same main character every time. Though I'm doing a sequel to the first
book, and it's written, and, it was really fun. It was really fun to go back to that
character. It was really fun to deal with some other issues in her life. I had a blast
with it, but I can't see myself writing these books and this character in the alphabet,
like Sue Grafton did. I'm going like, "I want to do maybe one more, and then I'm done with
that." I think mainly what it is is you have to understand your own emotional responses
to things to realize that other people's emotional responses aren't the same as yours. I think
empathy, understanding yourself, is certainly important. Observation and empathy are the
other things that are really important. I would be pretty horrified by books that were
populated by myself. I don't think I'd want to read those. [laughs] I know I wouldn't
want to write them. [laughs]
>>Presenter: Non writing question. Since you've lived in Venice for a while and some of us
are new to Venice, I wondered if you had any recommendations about the neighborhood? Restaurants
or things to do, and so forth, that are your favorites?
>>Brackmann: I love Venice, and it's changed a ton since I, I moved up here, I can never
remember. It was December '86 or December '87. I lived in this building on the Boardwalk
that was one of the "Jim Morrison slept here" buildings. He slept around, man. [laughter]
There's a lot of those. It was the kind of thing where you'd have,
it got turned into an illegal hostel, and there were guys that would steal things from
the top floor. I was on the bottom floor and they'd come and knock on my door at like 8
in the morning and say, "Do you want to buy a microwave?" I'd be like, "No, I don't want
to. Get out of here!" We had SWAT teams. It was fun. Venice. Fun. A little edgier than
some of us, than anybody really liked. But that kind of thing, I think it's--. It's safe
here. It's a great mix of people. You have people that have lived here for generations.
You have all kinds of artists, film industry people, and now, this whole silicon beach
thing. It's a very--. It's always been a very creative place. It's still a very creative
place. It's just manifesting itself differently than it used to. Being able to walk through
the neighborhood at night and not worry so much about getting shot is a very cool thing.
That's the upside of gentrification, I will say. And wine bars is the other upside of
gentrification. We have a lot of them. Rose Avenue has really developed quite a bit.
That's booming, and it's still kind of charming. Oscar's. Have any of you been to Oscar's or
Venice Beach Wines? Those are great. They're great little places, and the owners are really,
really cool people. And then, I really like, on the Boardwalk, the Venice Ale House. It's
surprisingly good. And then, have you been to Dry Tour yet? The place that just opened
on Windward and Pacific? That place I really like. It's another local, locally-sourced,
organic. But well done, and the prices are reasonable. And Taco Trucks. You know, there's
one that always parks on Rose that's called, I think it's Isla Bonita or something like
that. That's really good. Abbot Kinney, I like the coffee place, Intelligentsia. It's
over the top, but it's good. The people, again, they're really nice and they care about what
they do. The restaurants I don't go to there very much. Hal's is still kinda cool. It's
old school. It's been there for a long time. There's a sushi place that's on the Boardwalk,
of all, in that little food court that's on Westminster. There's two things in that. The
Pupuseria is good, and the little sushi place, which is surprising. You would not expect
that. I really, I walk everywhere, thus these fabulous
shoes. I just think that exploring the neighborhood in general, the different neighborhoods, there's
so much diversity in the housing stock. It's so much fun just to walk around and see what
you discover. Have you been to the canals? All that kind of stuff. That's, I don't like
the way a lot of that's developed. But it's still a really fun place to take out of town
visitors. "Hey, look at the ducks." Just wandering in this neighborhood, the one that we're in,
which was traditionally an African American neighborhood, and--.
Do you guys know the history of the area? Would I be repeating it? Well, Abbot Kinney,
who was a developer, around the turn of the century, wanted to make Venice. There were
a lot more canals than there are now. It was a vacation spot for people who lived in Los
Angeles. They would summer out here. I lived in one of those little resort hotels, with
the Murphy beds. That's what it was designed for. When he got old, he had a chauffeur and
an assistant, an African American man who couldn't live anywhere in Venice. He wanted
to leave him some property in his will, so he established the Oakwood community, wrote
the real estate covenants so that African American people were allowed to buy and live
there. Because things were very restrictive. It was 1920s, something like that?
That's part of the history of the neighborhood, which I hope doesn't go away in this rush
to megamansions and wine bars, because that would be a shame. Because I think what makes
Venice interesting is that it brings so many different kinds of people together, different
economic levels, different backgrounds. But everybody, I mean, I think the thing in common
is that almost everybody that's here likes being here. If you just wander around and
say hi to people, 99% of the people that you meet in Venice are really happy to be here.
I think that's one of the things that makes it a really special place. You just--. A lot
of places, there's a level of urban alienation. You don't have that here. This is a community.
>>Female #3: There's a lot of [inaudible] here.
>>Brackmann: Yeah. Yeah, there is. I think that's one of the best things about it. So
I was really happy to see you guys move into this building, because this building was just
getting beat to crap. It was really run down, and it wasn't being taken care of. It's such
a great local landmark. It's nice seeing it here and playing a vital role in both the
community and the world, really. We're glad to have you. [pause]
>>Male #6: A follow up on that question. Does Venice find its way into your writing? Not
literally, but I guess in a more sort of general or--?
>>Brackmann: Well, at the place-- I lived in two places in Venice. I lived at the Ellison,
which was one of these old apartment buildings on the Boardwalk. About nine years ago, I
moved into a little bungalow cottage which was built in 1910 that I call Shack by the
Sea that I walk down from. It's very shack-like. It's got these big bamboos, and it's wood
and open ceiling. It's just a very creative environment. It's the kind of place where
I have felt inspired to do work. I think Venice in general inspires people to do work. Part
of it is that you just meet so many interesting people. It's always better to be in a community
that's about fostering creativity in all its different forms.
So I haven't written about Venice specifically, but it's just one of the rare places that
I think, its foundation is creativity, from the moment that it was built. Who builds canals?
[laughs] Who builds Venice in the middle of Los Angeles? Some crazy developer dude. It
started from there, and I think we still feel that now.
>>Male #7: This is going to reveal my ignorance of your work, but I was curious. You set a
lot of your books around social ills or causes.
>>Brackmann: Mmhmm.
>>Male #7: I was interested in how you work the story around that. Is it just a setting,
or do you advocate solutions, or how does that affect your characters and plots?
>>Brackmann: It's like I said. It's a hard line to walk because I can't stand reading
overly didactic fiction. It's boring. I don't--. I have a short attention span. So I think
it has to be woven very carefully and organically into this story, otherwise, you're just going
to do a fantastic belly flop. I mean, I find it kinda funny, because most of the people
that comment on the stuff that I write don't even comment about it. I guess that means
I'm successful, because no body is mentioning, "Oh yeah, this book is really about", you
know. And how things get solved or don't solved
depends on the issue involved. That's another thing. I don't, I get a little bit frustrated.
They're fun escapism, and people get to read what they want to read. But when you have
some huge world shaking problem and action man fixes the whole thing by the end of the
book, I'm like, "That never happens. It not how stuff works." I'm more interested in more
open ended sorts of things because some things can't be resolved. It's really more about
how the character responds than it is about "I'm going to fix the problem of arbitrary
authority that abuses its power" because one little person is not-- that's the first book--
is not going to be able to do this. It's more just like, "I've already been screwed over
by arbitrary authority that abuses its power. I have to figure out how to survive this and
how I'm going to live with this. How do we live with the fact that so many things are
completely out of our control? Are these really, really huge, scary kinds of issues? What can
we personally do? How much effect can we have on them? More to the point, how do we live
with it? That interests me more than solving an issue. I like to deal with things that
are not particularly solvable by one person. It's more about going like, "Okay, we have
an entire system that is behaving in this way. What are we going to do about it? How
do we respond to it? Is there anything we can do about it? What positive actions can
we take? More to the point, can I survive the scary guy with guns who's trying to kill
me?" So yeah, it's a tricky thing to do. But you've got to really embed it. Again, the
nice thing about suspense genre is that you don't really have a lot of time to waste.
You can't take "Now I'm going to stand up here and explain to you how I feel about the
abuse of the Constitution." I'm not going to do that. But yeah. Sometimes I think maybe
I've been more subtle than I think, because it's like "Yeah, I don't get what this book
was." [makes whining noises] [laughter] It gets a little frustrating sometimes. [laughs]
But yeah, you've got to make it organic to the story.
Well, thank you. This has really been a pleasure. I'm so delighted to have met you all and finally
gotten inside the Giant Binoculars. I hope you enjoy the book.
[applause]
>>Presenter: Lisa will be signing, if anyone would like to get their book signed at the
table over there. Thank you, Lisa.